use one
expects to reap advantage is not to have done one's duty. The doing of
duty in this spirit simply resolves itself into a subtler and more
pervasive form of selfishness. He castigates the popular presentation of
religion as fostering this same fault. On the other hand, there is a
trait of rigorism in Kant, a survival of the ancient dualism, which was
not altogether consistent with the implications of his own philosophy.
This philosophy afforded, as we have seen, the basis for a monistic view
of the universe. But to his mind the natural inclinations of man are
opposed to good conscience and sound reason. He had contempt for the
shallow optimism of his time, according to which the nature of man was
all good, and needed only to be allowed to run its natural course to
produce highest ethical results. He does not seem to have penetrated to
the root of Rousseau's fallacy, the double sense in which he constantly
used the words 'nature' and 'natural.' Otherwise, Kant would have been
able to repudiate the preposterous doctrine of Rousseau, without himself
falling back upon the doctrine of the radical evil of human nature. In
this doctrine he is practically at one with the popular teaching of his
own pietistic background, and with Calvinism as it prevailed with many
of the religiously-minded of his day. In its extreme statements the
latter reminds one of the pagan and oriental dualisms which so long ran
parallel to the development of Christian thought and so profoundly
influenced it.

Kant's system is not at one with itself at this point. According to him
the natural inclinations of men are such as to produce a never-ending
struggle between duty and desire. To desire to do a thing made him
suspicious that he was not actuated by the pure spirit of duty in doing
it. The sense in which man may be in his nature both a child of God,
and, at the same time, part of the great complex of nature, was not yet
clear either to Kant or to his opponents. His pessimism was a reflection
of his moral seriousness. Yet it failed to reckon with that which is yet
a glorious fact. One of the chief results of doing one's duty is the
gradual escape from the desire to do the contrary. It is the gradual
fostering by us, the ultimate dominance in us, of the desire to do that
duty. Even to have seen one's duty is the dawning in us of this high
desire. In the lowest man there is indeed the superficial desire to
indulge his passions. There is also the l